


The Raven's Friend

by assassin_nariel



Category: A Land Fit for Heroes - Richard Morgan, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: (s), Canon Gay Character, Derogatory Language, Gen, Ronan Being Ronan, Walk Into A Bar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 19:55:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2785751
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/assassin_nariel/pseuds/assassin_nariel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Raven Cycle: set sometime during Dream Thieves<br/>Ronan loses his way in a dream.<br/>Contains underage drinking, precocious ravens, Swords with a History, premonitions, warnings, and life lessons from an unlikely fairy godfather - or just another dream creature.</p><p>(Knowledge of other fandom not required or indeed expected *sigh* vague spoilers for its ending, though)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Raven's Friend

He didn’t know when he left the road, or when he had started walking. One thing Ronan Lynch knew was that he was dreaming, and that he still needed a drink. He wasn’t sure how he got here, or why his car had stalled, but he started walking along the road and it inexplicably deteriorated as the lurking fog grew thicker, covering the Virginia sky, the entire world. The asphalt had given way to uneven flat stones, more and more broken up the farther he walked, the gaps between them ever widening, as if the world itself was coming apart. A raven cawed above him, and he felt small claws and a familiar weight on his shoulder, feathers rustling against his cheek as Chainsaw steadied herself. It seemed right that she should be here, even if it was just a dream reflection of her. Her claws raked his shoulder as she took off again, disappearing into the grey impenetrable mist above the marsh.

Moss squelched wetly under his feet, and he stumbled, trying to keep his steps to the pale stones of the old road. Chainsaw kerah’d above him, and as he looked up he caught a glimmer in the corner of his eye. Lights. Everyone knew lights on the marsh lead you to bad places, to be lost forever and never to return. But there was the call again, distorted and ghostly through the rolling mist, yet unmistakeably Chainsaw. He turned left, his steps heavy as the muddy ground threatened to suck his feet in, and possibly the rest of him. It got darker, the closer he came to the warm, candle-tinged light, and then his feet were on firmer ground. Dust rose at his feet, as Chainsaw landed in front of him with an amiable caw, hopping ahead of him like a little majordomo, up the two steps to a wooden porch with an unsafe-looking old swing swaying in an absence of wind. A weather-worn sign creaked above Ronan’s head, swaying too, and he took two steps aside to read it.

**The Raven’s Friend**

Above the neatly carved letters, there was a likeness of a raven spreading her wings, and a sword about twice her size. Ronan couldn’t tell if the darker patches along the blade were shadows, peeling paint, or blood.

A candle each burned in the windows of the old, craggy house, and silence within. The saloon-type door swayed with a gentle creak as Chainsaw landed on it. Incongruous on the dark, withered wood, there was a splash of colour – a peeling rectangular rainbow sticker no larger than a credit card. Anachronistic though it was, it looked as old as the rest of the place. Chainsaw gave another encouraging caw and flew fearlessly inside.

“ _Hello, traveller._ ”

Ronan took a deep breath and stepped inside, pushing the doors open. His fingers twitched away from the slippery plastic of the rainbow sticker as if it had the power to burn him. Chainsaw had landed on the counter, merrily picking at seeds in a tiny porcelain plate. It rang like a little bell when her beak struck it. She gave another kerah, inviting Ronan to come closer.

The bar – the room – was a curious mixture of old and new times, and even the new things were old. Ronan couldn’t help thinking that Gansey would love it here. There were even books, shelves of them built in between the windows, bright paperbacks livening up the darker, leather-bound volumes and journals. The furnishings looked stolen from a spaghetti western film set, the bar carved from the same dark wood as the floor, he could not name it. Yet the beer taps gleamed chrome, and their labels were alight with electricity, Kilkenny and Guinness and Heineken and another in letters Ronan couldn’t read or even guess what language they were in. Most of the light in the room came from candles, from the real wax-dripping chandelier on the surprisingly high ceiling that didn’t seem to agree with the outer dimensions of the house, and from the roaring fireplace to Ronan’s right. He hadn’t been aware that he was cold until he stepped inside. There was a coke fridge behind the bar, too, and an impressive assortment of every liquor imaginable – Ronan only knew a third of them. Several open bottles of wine peeked over the counter, lined up haphazardly next to a register that Ronan couldn’t decide on whether it was an antique or wannabe-steampunk. The man behind it lifted a wine glass to his lips, sinister red liquid sloshing in it when he set it down with a smile that was just an edge too sharp to be wholly friendly.

With the self-assuredness of a man in a dream, Ronan straddled one of the bar chairs and looked straight into the man’s glittering eyes.

“Don’t know if you can tell, man, but I’m dying for a drink,” he said.

The man’s smile sharpened, twisting the jagged scar on his clean-shaven jaw. Must be a bitch to shave around, Ronan thought, in a strange moment of sympathy. Perhaps because he was dreaming, he was not surprised that the man didn’t ask what his poison was, nor that he poured the right whisky, and the right amount of it.

“ _How’s school?”_ the man asked.

“Who says I’m in school, huh?”

_“When else would one be dying for a drink?”_

Ronan snorted. Touché. He heard no judgement in the man’s voice, and no discernible accent that could have placed him anywhere but inside Ronan’s own head. A figment of his imagination. It didn’t seem that unlikely. Ronan was never big on playing videogames, but if he did, that would be the kind of character he’d pick. An air of mystery and danger, a scar on his face that enhanced his angular good looks rather than diminish them. Long black hair tied back, appropriate for a pseudo-medieval fantasy, just like the improbably shiny sword mounted above the fireplace. Although shiny was perhaps the wrong word. It was black, hilt and blade, but for a dark blue sheen along its edge, and it reflected the light like an oil slick would. As if following his eyes, Chainsaw took off and flew over to perch on its hilt, ruffling up her feathers to dry the clinging damp of the fog from them.

Ronan glanced at the man behind the bar, to see if he would mind, but he was smiling still, though with less of a cutting edge.

_“Let him. It couldn’t be more appropriate.”_

“Her.” Ronan corrected, automatically. “And she’s house-trained.”

It was better to remain in good standing with proprietors of bars that had rare vintage Irish whisky.

_“I would expect no less of a fine young lady. Does she have a name?”_

“Chainsaw.”

 _“Chain-saw.”_ A bright flash of even white teeth. _“Chainsaw, meet Ravensfriend._ ”

“That you, or your sword?”

“ _Call me Gil. The sword’s name is a bit of a mouthful._ ” He looked into the fire, and beyond it. _“A complicated thing.”_

The room blurred, inexplicably, for the fraction of a second. The bar was still there, Chainsaw was still there, and the man, too.

“Try me,” said Ronan. “I’m pretty good with Latin.”

Gil smirked, his eyes glittering, reflecting the fire, and intoned: _“I am Welcomed in the Home of Ravens and Other Scavengers in the Wake of Warriors. I am Friend to Carrion Crows and Wolves. I am Carry Me and Kill with Me and Die with Me Where the Road Ends. I am not the Honeyed Promise of Length of Life in Years to Come, I am the Iron Promise of Never Being a Slave.”_

Ronan wasn’t sure if he was exasperated, or actually impressed. He hoped he looked more the former, and raised an eyebrow.

The man behind the bar shrugged. _“It’s a bit clunky, I know. I don’t speak Kir, myself, this is what my friend told me it translates to.”_

“Sounds like he was having you on in a major way, dude.”

 _“She. And I’d trust her with my life. One of the two people that ever lived I’d say that about – but you know what, kid, you do have a point, could she really…”_ He laughed quietly, shook his head. _“Ah, well. Who cares. A famous sword needs a name, and Ravensfriend stuck. It’s close enough.”_

“Famous, huh? Were you in a band?”

_“An army. I’m a bit of a war hero, you see. A local tourist attraction. Or used to be.”_

Gil refilled his glass, just as Ronan was about to ask him to, so he asked a different question. One even more pertinent.

“Are we in Cabeswater?”

_“Gallows Water. You have a bit of an accent there, kid.”_

“If I’m a kid, you shouldn’t be getting me drunk, man.”

_“You know you’re dreaming, right?”_

“Yeah, I know. I’m not an idiot.” He took another sip of the whiskey, savouring it. It was better than he remembered, even. “Thanks for your concern, anyway.”

_“This isn’t even Gallows Water, not really. Just my idea of it. Bar would be fuller. Dirtier, too. And no juke box.”_

Ronan blinked. There was a juke box, right next to the fireplace, huge and old and gaudy and unplugged. There was no way he could have overlooked it before.

“Did you dream that?” he asked.

“ _Picked it up along the way._ ” Gil’ eyes skidded off Ronan’s again, like water off a stone in a stream. _“Something like that. Tell you what, kid –  Ronan.”_ He slid a quarter towards him. _“Put on the Stones for me, and next one’s on the house.”_

Ronan considered asking how Gil knew his name, cringed inwardly at the stupidity of the question. “The Rolling Stones?” he asked, stalling. He reached for the quarter, still held to the counter by Gil’s finger. He put his finger on it, too, deliberately letting them touch.

_“Is there any others?”_

He expected to feel a ghost, cool and uncanny if you knew what to expect. Gil’s fingers were almost defiantly ordinary. Warm, slightly damp – he smelled a stray drop of wine, stealthily brushing his fingers under his nose as he took up the quarter and went to plug in the juke box – quite human, really, down to the rough edge of a recently cut fingernail. Ronan didn’t know whether to be disappointed or alarmed.

There was no outlet in the wall, but the juke box lit up at his approach. He flipped through the menu, the vinyl disks clicking under the transparent veneer, 70s, 80s, to the first Stones song he found. He popped the quarter in. “Gimme Shelter?”

_“Love that one. Might just be my favourite.”_

Ronan turned around, saw his glass being topped off. Stalked back and downed it recklessly. “Now don’t get fresh with me, old man,” he said. “You wanna put a hand on my knee, a free drink’s not gonna cut it.”

_“You’re far too young for me, little knife.”_

“Don’t sell yourself short. C’mon, you’re barely forty,” Ronan smirked, purposefully guessing his age higher than he looked. He felt a little more at ease when the jab worked, or maybe it was the warmth of the whisky.

 _“I’ll have you know I was thirty-two, when I – last time I checked,”_ Gil informed him, tersely. Somehow, Ronan knew he had omitted the word _died_.

“Another?”

_“You’re driving, later.”_

“If I can find where I left my car.”

 _“Oh, it’s right outside,”_ Gil said. He never looked out of the windows into the darkness that had gathered while they were talking.

“That’s not where I left it.”

Gil smirked at him, he seemed to do that a lot, then looked away, like he was hearing something in Jagger’s voice that Ronan wasn’t privy to. “ _You’re welcome_ ,” he said, when the words gave way to riffs. “ _You just drive straight away from the house. Don’t take the road, don’t look for it. You’ll know when you hit the ley line, then you go right.”_

“Why should I trust you?” asked Ronan, in what he considered a passable approximation of Gansey’s most urbane, authoritative tones.

 _“Your friend likes me.”_ Gil whistled, once, low and dissonant. Chainsaw, who so far sat still in a puffed up ball of feathers like an extra pommel on the Ravensfriend, instantly spread her wings and soared over, landing between them. Not only did she let Gil pet her, she let him cover her sleek dark head with his palm, rest it against her wings. Ronan couldn’t slap his hand away without also disturbing her, so he balled his hands to fists, frowning furiously.

“She’s just angling to steal your sword,” he said.

“ _That’s why I probably shouldn’t trust you, Greywaren.”_ He held Ronan’s angry gaze, as Ronan refused to look away, for longer than either of them wanted to. In the end, Gil was the one to lower his eyes, but he didn’t look defeated – resigned, more. A bitter, ironic smile played on his lips. “ _Not like I have much use for it, these days. Piece of advice, Ronan Lynch – if someone goes through all that trouble to bury someone at the end of the world, maybe they wanted them to stay buried. Speaking from personal experience.”_

This, Ronan had to ask. “Are you Glendower?”

Gil laughed at him, a short, grating sound. Candles flickered, just outside of Ronan’s vision.

 _“Fuck, no. But I went looking for a buried king, once, now here I am, a dirty old man running a bar in the middle of nowhere between space and time. And in hindsight, saving the world ain’t all it’s made out to be. Not when you’re not around to see it. Tell you what – I’d sooner have watched the world burn, with my friends by my side. Gone out in a blaze of fucking glory. Now I know you’ve got a special kind of friend yourself, don’t you?”_ He leaned over the bar, too close for comfort, and sighed, with unmasked, demeaning pity. “ _Look at that pure, brotherly fucking love. Boy, you’ve got it bad. I thought I was pathetic, but man, I didn’t even come close.”_

Ronan stood up, not caring that his stool fell over behind him, the thump too quiet for its solid bulk.

“Shut up,” he hissed. “Shut up, you don’t know shit…”

 _“What I’d like to say,”_ Gil continued, his quiet voice cutting right across Ronan’s, _“what I usually say to sad young boys like yourself: don’t wait for him, he will never love you like you love him, you’re wasting your time, and love is arguably a waste of time, period – “_

Ronan savagely kicked the overturned chair out of his way. “Chainsaw?” he spit. “We’re leaving.”

_“…but in this particular case, you just don’t have all that much time left. He doesn’t; soon, he’ll be as dead as that king he’s looking for…”_

Ronan looked over his shoulder, despite himself. Gil was still casually leaning against the bar, the glass in his hand swaying, the rest of wine in it going around slowly like the tide. Somehow, this affected flamboyance did nothing to cover the eldritch glimmer in his eyes that couldn’t be reflecting the fire; the angle was wrong. It had been wrong all along.

The whisky burned in his stomach as he stumbled through the saloon doors. Cold air slapped him in the face. The fog parted suddenly in a flash of blinding light.

_…is just a kiss away…_

A fading echo of the Stones song, and the roar of the eighteen-wheeler rushing at him, Chainsaw shrieking, her wings slapping his face as she flapped around the interior of the BMW. Ronan jerked the wheel to the right, the car’s wheels skidding on the damp road, sending him into an uncontrolled spin. A too-loud, shattering sound. The engine settled down to a quiet, steady rumble, as he came to a standstill by the side of the road.

Chainsaw flew out through the open window, cursing furiously in her own tongue. Ronan opened the door, stumbled out of the BMW and threw up. As he wiped his mouth, he saw that his taillight was busted. Nothing more. He laughed, a hollow laugh that was mostly shock and only a little relief.

 _Gansey will kill me_ , he thought. He cared more about what Gansey would say than about having almost died. Perhaps there was cause for concern.

Chainsaw returned to his shoulder, and pecked painfully at his ear. Her loud “Kerah!!” spoke volumes.

“Alright,” Ronan muttered. “Alright.” He spit one last time. “I’m going home, already.”

Gansey was not going to die. Not on his watch. It was just another nightmare, one with pretty good booze admittedly, neither the strangest nor the scariest dream he’s had. Downright tame. Pleasant, even, until that asshole had to go and get personal.

It wasn’t until he arrived at Monmouth that he discovered that he did take an object out of that dream, unfortunately not the bottle of whisky. He found a tattered matchbook in his pocket that he didn’t remember taking, printed with the same raven-and-sword sign he saw in his dream.

He expected a message, and wavered briefly, tempted to just throw it away and not let the meddling wanker keep the last word. Curiosity got the better of him.

_Give it a shot. He’s worth it._

“Fucking faggot,” Ronan muttered, uncharitably and hypocritically. Then he set the matchbook on fire and dropped it to the ground, stomping on it for good measure as it burned out.

The next day, before school, he got the broken taillight fixed at the garage Adam worked at. It wasn’t his shift. Ronan knew that, and so, no questions were asked, and he had to say nothing about falling asleep at the wheel.

Nobody had to know.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> (fyi TRC fans, I should point out for fairness' sake that not only Gil, but his sword, its epic name, and even the song of choice are (c) Richard Morgan, and I take no credit for that whatsoever.)  
> (Also not to advertise openly but if you ever wanted to read bloody dark fantasy with gay and lesbian protagonists imjustsaying. *slinks away*)


End file.
